Alice Cooper

Gary Lineker’s been getting some stick from the anti-immigrants for speaking up on Twitter about the child migrants coming across from Calais before France bulldozes the camps. Cabinet ministers and tabloid newspapers have questioned whether some of these kids look too old to count as minors, and the former Leicester City and England striker dared to call out those statements and even acknowledge the struggles these people have experienced prior to arriving on the French coast.

Still wearing my tin hat. Insult me, disagree, argue, but don’t say I’m not entitled to opine because I used to be a footballer. Ta.

I don’t need to get deep into it. Plenty’s been written about it already. I just remember when Pearl Jam and other musicians were playing during the US presidential election campaign of 2004, and rocking Republican Alice Cooper called such action “treason”.

“When I was a kid and my parents started talking about politics, I’d run to my room and put on the Rolling Stones as loud as I could. So when I see all these rock stars up there talking politics, it makes me sick.

“If you’re listening to a rock star in order to get your information on who to vote for, you’re a bigger moron than they are. Why are we rock stars? Because we’re morons. We sleep all day, we play music at night and very rarely do we sit around reading the Washington Journal.”

-Alice Cooper

I make no secret of my great and abiding love for Pearl Jam, and this response from Eddie Vedder made me love him and the band all the more:

“I read a piece from a musician I respect, Alice Cooper, who wrote that musicians really need to keep out of political discussions. For one, they’re idiots, he said. For another, when he was a kid and his parents started talking politics, he ran to his room and put on the Rolling Stones and turned it up as loud as he could. And I agree with Alice. I don’t think any of us want to be doing this. . . . But my problem is that my stereo does not go loud enough to drown out the sound of bombs dropping in the Middle East.”

-Eddie Vedder

I think Cooper will find plenty of fans old and young who disagree with the limits he tried to impose (and still imposes, in lock step with Trump). People who rocked out to Cooper in the 70s may have gotten switched on a few years earlier by Dylan or Buffalo Springfield. Why deny their experience? Similarly, why deny Lineker his views? If he does nothing more than read the headlines, he’s as well informed as most in this country. No surprise that those ridiculing the rock pulpit or the sports pulpit seem to disagree with the views expressed from those celebs, though they couch their opinions in a critique of the person, instead.

I’ll give my last word on this to a biting blog. I found it on Twitter.

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